


Bioware and Lace

by nostalgia



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Oldfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-05
Updated: 2005-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22133026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgia/pseuds/nostalgia
Summary: What if you made her love you?
Relationships: Kathryn Janeway/Seven of Nine
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Bioware and Lace

What if you made her love you?

This is the thought that came when you met her in the corridor and exchanged your subtext-laden greetings. She was on her way to the weekly immunosuppressant - that a slow sustained release to knock out part of the thing she used to be. That last part is the thing that triggered the thought that has derailed you utterly.

If you made her, are her feelings real? You've always accepted - assumed - that when Seven is cruel or callous it's the result of nature rather than nurture. You used to know that Annika Hansen is a kind and gentle woman, empathic and sensitive. The harsh edges are Borg, the bitterness implanted by heartless metal.

After the terrible thought occurs, you know something new; Annika Hansen is dead.

And it took you a long time to realise this, far longer than it should have. Proof that you can't think clearly when it comes to her. You have a tall blonde blind spot and too many responsibilities not to worry about that.

At first she was a child, a doll. You dressed her up, grew her hair out, taught her how to paint her lips. Your parents always taught you that beauty is only skin deep, but that little cliché lost its bite once everyone could have perfect skin. And this, you realise, is why you showed her the Renaissance. You set out to create a masterpiece, invented perspective and significance that wasn't there before because it wasn't real.

You wonder if she dreams in binary. Backed up against a wall, plugged into the machine. You wonder if she dreams with the ship.

Chakotay once told you that a surprising number of Federation worlds have a name for the Borg that translates roughly into 'Wrath of God'. You didn't think it was surprising. God is personal, intimate, almost voyeuristic. The Borg feel almost tailor-made to make the Federation wake up in a cold sweat.

It's something you never realised before Seven came aboard. All of you hate machines.

And that's the part of her that scares you. The implants, the nanoprobes, the cold bite of metal when she touches you with that inhuman hand. Because you know. You know she really is something more than you are, something so terrifyingly different. Animal species, in the end, are hormones and neurons. Anger and compassion and guilt and fear; the combinations always different, but you always know how they think. You know why they think.

Annika Hansen is dead, the sort of dead that scares all the cultures you could join back home. You'd take a biotech lung, you'd drink coffee that used to be scrap metal. In a pinch you'd take someone else's blood. Those things are real, those things are natural now. The real mark of disability these days is having metal instead of skin.

Because what if it wakes up? What if it starts to think for you?

Your girlfriend thinks in machine code. And you thought, in that pancultural nightmare, that you could overwrite this with hormonal language, something organic. Something real.

And she adapted, of course, to the things you gave her. You gave her love, and how could she not respond in kind? The Borg believe in perfection and harmony. Seven is the not the sort of girl to be coy about sex, but she’s the sort to be pragmatic. The things inside her are things that long to be cogs in a machine. If one of the specifications is that Seven must love you, then Seven can be made to adapt.

When you all of this, you realise something else; you're not sure if you want to make her human.


End file.
